Rock music from the socialist European countriesand their successors.Comments are welcome.Please tell me when you find an expired link! :)

mercoledì 13 febbraio 2013

PLAVI ORKESTAR - "SOLDATSKI BAL" (1985)

Guided by Saša Lošić (vocals, songwriting), Plavi Orkestar is one of the most famous Bosnian bands. This debut album was the first blockbuster of a long career, with sales between 0,5 and 1 million copies (depending on sources).

Despite being enormously popular, Plavi Orkestar is not the most acclaimed band among music critics and alternative rock listeners in Yugoslavia: they were not included in the YU 100 albums chart, and they only reached no. 97 in the B92 Radio songs chart, just to name the two biggest polls about Yugoslavian rock music.

I think their bad reputation is due to the big amount of awful, plastic-sounding music they have been producing since the Nineties. Nonetheless, their first two albums are brilliant, and I keep them in high consideration. It is a quite simple formula: a metallic, loud drum sound; sharp electric guitars which mixed post-punk style and oriental impressions; a couple of melodramatic acoustic ballads; powerful vocal tunes strongly influenced by Balcan folk music.

This album contains some of the catchiest melodies I've ever heard. Listen to it just once, and you wouldn't be able to get most of these tracks off your head. The first side in particular is impressive, with "Suada", "Medena curice", "Odlazi nam raja", "Gujo vrati se", "Šta će nama šoferima kuća", and "Bolje biti pijan nego star". It sounds like a greatest hits of Yugoslavian folk-pop!

2 commenti:

Soviet Sam, I have been enjoying your blog. You seem more interested in rock music, but are you familiar with Andrei Rodionov and Boris Tikhomirov? They made a pretty fun electronic album called 512 Kbytes. I've been trying to find more information on them, but all the links I find are of course in Russian.